We will be in Orlando from 12/19 to 12/29. I’m noticing that the days at the beginning of Christmas week are predicted by Touringplans to be pretty light. Other prediction sites have them as heavy days.
Can anyone offer any insight as to what it might actually be like? Typically we visit the first or second week of Dec to catch lighter crowds. 2020 is anything but typical.
Thanks!
Bill
Welcome!
A common misconception about Touring Plans Crowd Levels is that they are an indicator of the number of people in each park. However, they are an indicator of average queue waits at the rides in that park during 11am – 5pm - the peak ride times.
A CL 1 can feel like a CL 4 in terms of park capacity, but the queues may be moving quickly. Conversely, you can be in a CL 9 park that feels like a CL 5 because the streets aren’t packed. However, all the queues are super long.
With all that being said, IMHO, it’s going to be packed. People are going to travel. The parks are very busy right now & it’s not any holiday. I’d keep an eye on this Saturday, Halloween, to get a good idea of what it may look like.
Also, while I LOVE Touring Plans and these forums. I have been very impressed lately with another site / blogger who has been going every day since the reopening. Check out:
I still make a TP every trip & don’t rely on just one Diseny travel site. That being said though, a touring plan has been proven to save you up to four hours of time not standing in queues. With a touring plan you’ll be ahead of 90% of the people just wandering aimlessly asking, “What do you want to do next?” and then walking into a queue that is 90 minutes long. Later in the day that same queue may be only 15 minutes, but they won’t know that. However, you will because TP will have given you that data.
You are right, 12/21 to 23 are showing 2’s, pretty much like any weekday right now. I would plan on those days being more like a 4 or 5 average. Maybe similar to the 28th, 29th, and 30th. Just my guess. Of course you may be pleasantly surprised!
We will be there the 19-23 and are planning for bigger crowds. I have also made TP’s and will continue to change them up till the day of our trip! We are used to going in the summer during big crowds anyways and rely on a TP to get us through at least the morning. They have extended park hours for those dates to open earlier and close later so we will be there for rope drop, do a mini afternoon break and then go back to finish out the day in the park with less crowds. I am going to monitor the week of Thanksgiving to help plan better for our trip.
My uneducated guess would be that it will be busy, but not feel as busy as in past years. Holidays have been hit or miss. Halloween seemed less busy than past holidays from what I could tell from some videos I watched on YouTube. I would have thought Halloween would have been busy with it being on a Saturday this year. It seems likely that Disney will still be restricting capacity, so there will be fewer people in the parks. But with fewer things to do it will seem like there are more people in the parks than there actually are. As far as people being willing to travel, you might see many Americans travelling but it is still hard for people from other parts of the world to visit the US right now because of COVID. Even if we can get into the US the quarantine requirements when we return home make it unworkable for many. I expect that to be the same in December.
Also, not to get political, but I know many Canadians who have said they aren’t visiting the US this winter because they are worried about post-election riots etc. This includes several families that I know who would normally visit Disney for at least a few days between Christmas and New Years.